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Day three of 100 days of art: I did more key tracing and am almost done with that step. After that comes collaging the box–I have an idea of what that will look like, but tonight I realized that I want there to be a verbal component to this piece, and that that is probably the place for it. I have to hunt in some books for appropriate passages.
Are you in the midst of a 100 days commitment? What is it?
Tomorrow, Monday, October 21, I’m going to begin 100 consecutive days of a practice that’s important to me but that I often let drop out of busyness (actually fear), or because I’m not good enough at it (a.k.a. fear), or because it might not go anywhere (again, fear), or because it might take me somewhere scary ( . . . fear). If you want a community that will encourage you to keep at something, anything, for 100 days, please join me!
The thing I’m going to do is make art. What is yours?
Here’s the painting I started on August 19 (L) and its second stage, done today (R). The difference in color is mostly from the light in the room where I took the photos.
Our last day in Mexico, last month, I took a photo of this window, whose multiple layers caught my eye. I drew it almost immediately, but could tell it really wanted to be a painting. I hardly ever paint; when I went to list the categories for this post, “art” and “drawings” and various other media were on my list, but I had to add “paintings.”I actually watched a few YouTube videos on Acrylics for Beginners (Katie Jobling and Clive5Art were helpful), then dove in today. I like the way this medium urges me to work roughly before adding details. Those will have to wait until the weekend, probably.It’s on canvas, 9″ x 12”.
Oaxaca (7/10/19, pencil and white charcoal pencil)
Oaxaca Zocalo (7/11/19, pencil)
After drawing the above two–and keeping up a streak of drawing daily–I fell ill with a bug whose main effect was to drain me of energy so that it was hard even to stay sitting up for long. So I didn’t draw for two days, and then tonight, it felt so good to have enough life in me to look at the passionfruit in our fruit bowl and try to convey its wrinkles.
Passionfruit (7/14/19, pencil & white charcoal pencil))
Something I want to practice more is drawing clothed people. They always look so stiff. I tried to draw a dancer in Teotitlan the other day, and while his shadow looked lively, he looked like he was made of wood. I couldn’t capture the gesture, his sense of movement and aliveness, the way I can (sometimes) when drawing nudes. It’s all practice.
Recent sketches have brought me face to face with a big challenge in my drawing: how to portray very complex, detailed objects without showing every detail and while still conveying their general appearance. Drawing always entails decisions about what to put in and what to omit, but with some subjects it’s particularly difficult.
Last week I tackled the overhead branches of a leafy tree (known locally as a huizache; I think it’s a kind of acacia). I was rescued from this one early because Joy and Mookie wanted to go into the nearby museum, so I don’t know whether the approach I was using would have worked.
Then there’s this, from yesterday. As with the overhead branches, the complexity of these vines climbing the wall (of the San Pablo cultural center, in Oaxaca’s Centro) is exactly what drew my eye, and what I want to get onto the paper. Yet I don’t want to draw every single line and shadow. I drew fast and tried not to get too many niggly details down, but I didn’t know how to do what I would do with a more unitary subject, such as a human nude: draw in big simple shapes and then add detail. A subject like this seems to be nothing but detail, so I’m flummoxed.
Sorry for the glare on the paper. These are quick and dirty cellphone shots of my sketchbook.
For context, here’s another visitor’s photo of the same wall. Yummy detail, right? But how do I capture that?
I’ll keep working on it. I’m looking at nature drawings by masters like van Gogh and Monet to try to figure out how they conveyed complexity.
During vacation, I’m managing to do what I did earlier this spring for a few months, and drawing for at least a few minutes every day. Can I make a daily habit of it once I’m back into the swing of work? Let’s see.
A friend suggested that posting drawings now and then might help me, which I think is true, so here are a few.
I’ve been carrying my sketchbook with me (it’s small, about 5″ x 7″) and trying to work fast when I have a few minutes. Working fast helps me focus my attention more on the big picture and less on the niggly details, and in these four it worked fairly well. More on that challenge tomorrow.
The first two are graphite; the last two are fine-tip pen.
I had a kaleidoscope pattern in my office window that I’d made during one of the sessions of Exploring Mind, Hands, Spirit and Heart through Art I lead monthly. Dan Harper, our Associate Minister for Religious Education, asked if I’d like to make some more to be coloring pages for kids to do during services. So that’s what I’ve been happily doing with a lot of my art time for the past few weeks. Here are four in various stages of completion.
Once again I’m undertaking a daily spiritual practice for several weeks. I’ve called it a Lenten practice in the past, but I’ve become uncomfortable doing so, out of respect for Christians. I don’t take it lightly, but for me it is not a period of repentance, much less preparation for the death and resurrection of Jesus, so I don’t want to dilute what is, for others, one of the most sacred seasons of their year.
What I want is to engage in a deeper dive into reflection than I usually do, and for a longer period. The theological context aside, I think Lent has staying power as a practice because it’s both intensive and time-limited. It’s like Ramadan or, in the secular realm, 30-day diets: we can better challenge ourselves when we have a set amount of time in which to go deeper. I have seldom made a go of a daily practice, but seven weeks is something I might be able to sustain.
So far this year, I have. My two practices are to do five minutes of art play every day, ideally first thing in the morning, and to read the daily devotion in Resipescence: A Lenten Devotional for Dismantling White Supremacy, edited by Vahisha Hasan and Nichola Torbett. I learned about this wonderful book just as Lent was beginning, so I didn’t have a copy until about ten days in, but I caught up right away and have continued meditating on one per day. And the art has been a joy.
Do you have any spiritual practices, ether connected to Lent or not?
Black History Month, day 7
Darn. I am too tired to write a proper post. I want to give this wonderful artist his due, so I’ll just post a teaser for now and write more about him in tomorrow’s post.
I love this photo for three reasons. It pulls back far enough to convey how fluid and soft Anatsui’s sculptures appear (they are in fact made of thousands of tiny bits of scrap such as bottle caps). It shows the scale of the piece. And–oh, my heart–it is a portrait of our late, beloved friend Bean.
(Thanks to Gilad Kfir for taking this gorgeous photo of them, and his kind permission to use it here.)
(c) Gilad Kfir, http://www.giladphoto.com
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